Stuart Barker - Valentino Rossi

First published in the UK by John Blake Publishing

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First published in hardback in 2020

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78946-295-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-78946-296-8

Audio Digital Download ISBN: 978-1-78946-326-2

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Text copyright Stuart Barker 2020

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For my mum, Josie Barker
Valentinos greatest fan.

CONTENTS

BY KEVIN SCHWANTZ
500CC WORLD CHAMPION, 1993

I ts an honor to be asked to write the foreword for this book about Valentino Rossi. Hes someone Ive known of since 1989, although I dont think I got to actually meet him until 1990 or 1991 when we were all invited to a big, fun week in Livigno, Italy, where we went skiing and snowmobiling. There was a bunch of Italian riders and Graziano Rossi was there, as was a very young Valentino. I had already seen him racing a minimoto bike on a go-kart track near Misano. It was an endurance race and his team-mate was so much faster than anyone else out there, but when Valentino got on the bike it was noticeable just how much faster he was than even his team-mate. So, I felt like he was somebody we should keep an eye on because to have such a highly honed skill at such a young age was impressive. There was no doubt in my mind, there and then, that if he chose to go Grand Prix racing and really pursued it, he could be great at it.

Valentino burst onto the scene in the 125cc world championship just after I had quit racing. I didnt keep up with racing a lot at that time; when I walked away from the sport at the end of 1995 I just did my best to forget about it because I didnt want to be tempted back. So I didnt pay a lot of attention until Rossi started racing in the 500cc world championship in 2000. By that point I was excited about racing again and I predicted that, if he didnt dig himself a huge hole in his first few races on the 500, he would win the championship at the first attempt. But he did dig himself a hole by crashing too many times in the early rounds and Kenny Roberts Jr did exactly what he needed to do to win the championship. But the next year, Valentino absolutely dominated the class.

His impact on Grand Prix racing has been massive and it was immediate too. He really did shake it up, but I guess none of us knew just how much until now when we can stand back and look at all he has achieved. To continue to compete at the level hes been competing at for so long is truly astonishing and hes been competitive in pretty much every championship hes raced in since 1996. I dont know that any other rider has had a career thats been quite so lengthy. Its easy for me to say hes the greatest of all time. I mean, I know Giacomo Agostini and I know Phil Read and I knew the late John Surtees, but to have raced for as long as Rossi has on 125cc, 250cc and 500cc two-strokes, and on such a variety of four-stroke MotoGP bikes from 800cc to 1000cc, definitely makes him the greatest of all time for me. Maybe he hasnt matched Agostini yet in terms of overall Grand Prix wins and championships, but hes won on a much greater variety of motorcycles, thats for sure. Maybe Surtees was a little more remarkable because he then got in an F1 car and won that championship too.

Ive raced against Vale on supermoto bikes, in rally cars, and on motocross bikes and Ive ridden with him at his ranch, and I can tell you that, when he puts his mind to it, whatever he rides or drives, and whatever surface its on, from dirt to asphalt, hes always one of the fastest guys out there. He also proved, in a test at Barcelona in 2006, that he can get into a Formula One car and be just as fast as the top drivers. If he had lived in an era, like Surtees, when it was easier to get a seat in F1, who knows what he might have achieved on four wheels too?

The first time I went to Valentinos ranch I rode around for about twenty minutes or so before he showed up and came out on track to join me. He actually crashed as he was chasing me not that I was setting such a great pace, he just made a mistake. Anyway, all the bikes have lap-timers and he looked at mine and said, What? Nobody comes here for the first time and does lap times like that! He is just so competitive about these things; everything to him is a race or a challenge his whole life is about lap times and I thought, How does he get motivated, at the age hes at, to continue to go and train and practise and get ready for yet another 18-race MotoGP season? And I realised that it has to be that inner drive he has to just beat everybody at absolutely everything he does.

I always struggled to motivate myself again after a couple of weeks off at Christmas. Not to ride the motorcycle, because thats absolutely the most fun you can have, but it was all the other stuff the travelling and the media and the pressure and the PR events that was difficult to deal with. So for him to stay motivated for as long as he has shows what a true competitor he really is. And its got to be the kids at his academy that are keeping him so young and so fit and so focused. It will be great to see him when he does stop riding because, I promise you, he will be there to push those kids even harder than he pushed himself!

I see Valentino at races and hell have a thousand people chasing him on his scooter all the time. When he sees me, hell pull over and stop to chat and hell have to fend off all those people constantly. But it doesnt seem to me that fame has changed him at all; hes got time for absolutely everybody and he always stops and signs autographs every chance he gets. Neither wealth nor fame has gone to his head.

Valentino has been so important for the sport hes what the fans want to see. Marc Mrquez has a pretty big following now, so you see a lot of red in the crowd, but five, ten years ago there was only yellow everywhere you looked. Hes had the biggest following by far, to the extent that hes almost bigger than the sport itself.